Medlempalmerston

Riktigt namn

Ivor Gould

Om mig

Jewish, bookish, and very old. A bookseller and book collector. Have written for radio and TV, and a guide to the Greek island I retired to when I sold my bookshop in 1982. In 1991 my novel: 'A Smoking Dot in the Distance' was published by Sinclair-Stevenson, and short-listed for the Whitbread First Novel. It was paperbacked by Black Swan the following year.
Widely reviewed, it was the lead fiction review in the Times Literary Supplement, ('...a marvellously rude picaresque, a randy Bildungsroman, shrewdly dark satire.') Apart from lunch at Le Caprice, my reward, including the following PLR, was £10,000. For five years work. It was of course the high-watermark of my life.
The sequel ('The Further Adventures of Funf')bounced back from both my publishers, and many others, until even my agent lost heart. Eventually, I retired again, this time into on-line bookselling, out of print and rare, specialising, of course, in books about books.
Until last month, when we had new friends to dinner, and I showed them the book. When they had gone I opened it, for the first time in a decade - and found that I was laughing! The next morning I re-read my reviews, and letters from readers, and put the title into Google Search.
There were 56/60 used copies for sale, ranging from £1 to £64 - and Reviews!! ('Hilarious! 'A Book In A Million!!) and of course readers on LibraryThing who still had the book on their shelf!.
And this almost 20 years after publication! My book was alive and well. Maybe The Good Book Guide was right: 'THIS BOOK IS SERIOUSLY FUNNY ... IT MAY WELL BECOME A CLASSIC'
You can guess the rest. Smoking Dot is at the moment in Ohio, being scanned and converted into digital files. In early October, 2010, it will be on Amazon Kindle as an ebook, and then as a POD paperback. Hopefully, 'The Further Adventures of Funf' will not be far behind.
From an ebook manual, I learned about LibraryThing, and joined at once (under the alias of 'Palmerston - please don't ask!) and of course opened my library with You Know What. (Five Stars!) But by the time I understood what your site was all about, and I came to fill in 'About me', I felt ashamed. (Almost as if caught putting advertising stickers on marble bottoms in the V & A)
So, I entered my email, and my real name, paid for a lifetime subscription, and even if you are not moved to add my book to your library, I know you will wish me well.

Vistelseort

West London

Medlemskap

LibraryThing Early Reviewers

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